Nokia nabs NAVTEQ

Nokia and NAVTEQ have reached an agreement with the former acquiring the latter for $78 per share, including outstanding options for a cool $8.1 billion. What does this acquisition mean for the end users (we all know that stockholders who cash out now would’ve made some sort of profit)? For starters, splashing out such a huge amount shows the seriousness of the Finnish cellphone manufacturer to include GPS navigation in most, if not all, Nokia handsets in the near future. With continuing chip integration making this possible, be prepared to ditch that personal GPS navigation system in favor of a Nokia cellphone. Hopefully the economy of scale won’t add too much premium over such GPS-enabled handsets in the future – it’d be nice to see an entry level cellphone direct you to the nearest Starbucks so that you can get your game on with your DS Lite.